Mum and daughter’s 2,000 mile trek from Ukraine war to safety in South Molton - story by Peter Robinson (pages 18 - 22) “This is a very beautiful, picturesque place. This is where the wounds heal.” These are the words of Olena Subocheva, a refugee from the brutal war in Ukraine, speaking about how she feels now that she and her mother are being looked after by a family in South Molton.
“This is a very be picturesque place.autiful, where the wounds This is heal.”
For 82 days they had lived under shelling and bombing in Zaporozhye (also spelled Zaporizhzhia), a previously peaceful city in the south of Ukraine on the border of the Donbas region, where the full force of the Russian invasion is being felt (see map page 20). 82 days sheltering in a basement at night, emerging by day to tend the terrible wounds of those injured. “It was very hard mentally. Soldiers without limbs, their bodies mutilated, constant air raids and explosions,” said Olena Subocheva, aged 46, who worked in a hospital treating Ukrainian troops. “It was very tense, everything escalated daily, the explosions were very close and my mother pleaded with me every day to leave our beloved Ukraine.”
Olena and Tamara at the railway station in Lviv
She read online about the UK Government’s ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme and placed an advert on a Facebook group, there she eventually made contact with Tricia and Wayne Hyde in South Molton, who offered to become their hosts.
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